The Greco-Persian wars occurred several times through out the two
people's history. I've been studying the Greeks for several years and
most this information comes from the ancient Greek historian
Herodotus.In 480 BC the Persian king Xerxes took approximately
350,000-500,000 soldiers across a narrow water way known as the
Hellespont that connects Asia Minor to Europe and went into northern
Greece. Thinking he would save Sparta by martyring himself, the Spartan
King, Leonidas took 300 of his best troops to go to the hot gates which
was a narrow pass near Thermopylae that would offer a tremendous
strategic advantage because only a small amount of men could fight at
one time,making the Persians massive numbers much less useful. About
7000 other Greeks came along with Leonidas including Thespians,who made
up the largest part of the Greeks at the battle. After 3 days they were
all dead, however they dealt a huge blow to Xerxes and his army's
numbers and moral. Xerxes's main objective was to destroy Athens for
supporting a rebellion in the Ionian town of Sardis years earlier as
well as the humiliating defeat at Marathon. After there was no standing
army in between Athens and Thermopylae, Xerxes marched straight to
Athens and burned it to the ground.
Xerxes realized this was a mistake and began rebuilding Athens the next
day. With Leonidas dead, a new Spartan king was put in place. They
needed to act quickly to save Southern Greece. The new Spartan king,
Cleombrotos, decided he would make a wall at the narrowest part of the
passage into Southern Greece by Corinth, and to not help Athens.
Cleombrotos died suddenly approximately a month after his orders and
Sparta gets a new King. Pausanias was one of Sparta's generals now he
was king. Although Athens and Sparta were engaged in bloody conflict
very often,Pausanias knew if he was going to save all of Greece he
needed to ally with Athens to defeat the Persians. It is what happened
after Thermopylae that saved the Western world and democracy. In 479 BC
the Persians sacked Athens for a second time within the 365 days they
sacked it the first time.The battle that would decide the fate of all
Greece was the Battle of Plataea.
Pausanias was a warrior king and wanted to fight the Persians out of
Greece. He knew that he did not have any skirmishers or archers so he
developed a tactic to take out the Persian archers. It was called the
hoplite run. All Greek heavy infantry of the time were hoplites which
means they stood interlocking shields with 6-8 foot spears sticking out
to make a spear wall. This was devastating against light infantry and to
charge into a phalanx formation with cavalry was suicidal. However this
formation was highly immobile and was vulnerable to flank attacks as
well as missile troops. Pausanias developed the "hoplite run" which
means that the hoplites would break the phalanx formation and sprint
directly onto the enemy archer's position killing them before the
Persian main infantry could start fighting.
In August, 479 BC, Pausanias took 45,000 Spartan warriors and 50,000
Greeks including several thousand helots and went to combat the
Persian's 300,000 man force near Athens. The Persian's reaction was to
fall back to Plataea where there was an open battlefield to fight at
where their archers and cavalry could be used. The Persian general
Mardonius was in command of 300,000 men and put them on the opposite
side of the river Ossopus. Neither Mardonius or Pausanias moved to
commence battle for a week. Mardonius finally sent a small mounted
archer band to harass the Spartans into charging the field, but the
Spartans did not take the bait. Instead they killed some of the Persians
and held their ground. On the tenth day, Pausanias is running low on
water and supplies so leads his men into a orderly retreat, but as he
does this Mardonius charges his entire army onto the field to try and
cut down the retreating Spartans, which ended up being a tremendous
mistake. The Spartans turn directly towards the Persians, go into
phalanx and advance towards the Persians.
Persian cavalry could not maneuver because of the rocky terrain so they
order all the archers to fire. The Spartans shrug off the arrows as they
advance right towards the Persian line. When the 2 lines collided, the
Persians were instantly decimated. The Greek heavy infantry wearing 60
pounds of armor, using the best tactics and weapons available at the
time period slaughtered the Persian light infantry and archers. It is
said that Mardonius, the Persian commander was struck and killed with a
rock thrown by a Greek during the battle. At the end of the day, over
150,000 Persians lay dead, a hard number to imagine, half of the entire
Persian army. After this battle, the Persians would leave Greece in a
few months and never try to invade again.
In about 150 years, all the city-states joined together under the
command and influence of Phillip II of Macedon. When Phillip was
assassinated, his son Alexander took over and with all the resources of
Greece and Macedon, invaded Persia destroying the entire empire and
starting a new reign of Greek rulers in Asia Minor,Egypt, and as far as
Western India. When Alexander died, several kingdoms were established by
Alexander's generals which would eventually collapse. Since Greece's
manpower was spread so thin over Alexander's great empire it made
mainland Greece and Macedon very weak, but rich. However most the riches
would stay in Asia Minor. Approximately 200 years after Alexander's
campaign, Rome conquered Greece and Macedon.
Roman officials bred with
the Greeks so much that after a hundred years most of the Romans
controlling Greece were 50-75% Greek and when Constantine separated the
empire into Western and Eastern, the Eastern Roman Empire or the
Byzantine empire (after the city of Byzantium, the capital) was almost
completely Greek. The Greco-Roman empire would outlast the original
Roman empire by 1000 years. In the ancient world no one could rival the
accomplishments of Alexander the Great, defeat Greek philosophy or have
such a great sense of pride in culture as the Greeks did. They truly
were the Powerhouse of the Mediterranean world during the Classical Age.
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